China’s Privileged Rule-Breakers

Yiyi Lu, an expert on Chinese civil society, discusses local governments’ use of the Internet in China. Ms. Lu is an associate fellow at the U.K.-based Chatham House. She is the author of “Non-Governmental Organisations in China: The Rise of Dependent Autonomy” (Routledge 2008).

Yiyi Lu

There are different views on what constitutes the biggest threat to stability in China. For anyone who follows China’s domestic news on a daily basis, it doesn’t take long to figure out that many of the social disturbances and much of the popular discontent can be attributed to two things: the unbridled privileges claimed by officials and an almost universal disregard for rules.

One way to understand how these two phenomena threaten stability is through the prism of traffic management. Consider, for example, these recent items from the Chinese press:

– After being pulled over in the Henan Province capital of Zhengzhou for breaking traffic rules and driving with a fake license plate, an official from a nearby county warns a policeman not to “poke your nose in other people’s business” and threatens to have him killed (report in Chinese).

– Escorted by a police cruiser, a car carrying the mayor of the Hebei Province city of Xingtai hits a 14-year-old student while rushing through a red light. The mayor carries on with his official duties that day instead of going to the hospital to visit the victim, who was left permanently disabled (report in Chinese).

– Traffic police in Hunan’s Hengdong County brawl with a man they accuse of having illegally installed an umbrella on his motorcycle. A crowd of more than 1,000 onlookers gets so angry over the policemen’s treatment of the motorcyclist, they overturn two police cars in protest. A subsequent government investigation finds the policemen were “simplistic, rough and lacked patience” in enforcing the law (report in Chinese).

– Policewoman Mao Li in Shanxi’s Hunyuan County is showered with praise online after it’s reported that she regularly tickets county officials whose cars violate traffic rules. In the six months since starting her job, Mao is reported to have handed out 138 tickets to officials in nearly all the county government agencies, including the police department. She also ticketed her aunt, despite her father’s intervention on the aunt’s behalf (report in Chinese).

Taken together, such stories – the likes of which are legion in Chinese newspapers and online – suggest Chinese officials are struggling to accept the idea that they are bound by rules. As one Chinese commentator remarked on the Henan case, the official’s confrontation with policemen was a showdown between power and the law. The incident occurred not because the official was audacious, but because he was insolent.

Although less dramatic than official death threats, the clearing of roads and intersections to make way for the vehicles of government officials is an official privilege that plays an equal role in fueling public discontent.

The practice has often disrupted normal traffic flow and was the direct cause of the Xingtai accident. In the aftermath, the victim’s parents questioned if Xingtai’s mayor had enough rank to enjoy the escort of a police car. While there are regulations stipulating that police cars should not be used for non-police business, in practice there is much abuse of police cars, especially by relatively low-ranking local officials. In some cases, officials have used police cars to clear the way for the weddings and funerals of their relatives.

The tremendous attention paid to a policewoman who refuses to turn a blind eye to officials’ violations suggests those violations are widespread.

Unfortunately, as the Hengdong case illustrates, police are not always such admirable agents in the government’s quest to maintain order. Indeed, in many instances, they are part of the problem—no less susceptible than officials to the notion that power trumps rules. Although the government investigation determined the Hengdong police were acting in accordance with the law in attempting to impound the umbrella-adorned motorcycle, their thuggishness in enforcing the law arguably presented a greater threat to public safety than their victim’s illegally modified vehicle.

The privileges of officials and the disregard for rules are closely related phenomena. In a mutually reinforcing downward spiral, rules are often brushed aside in order to protect officials’ privileges while officials wallowing in their privileges feel less and less need to obey the rules. And worse, by abusing their privileges, officials send a message to others that rules are meant to be broken. Traffic management is a realm in which this unfortunate symbiosis occurs frequently, but it is by no means the only one.

China’s central government is clearly aware of the dangers of leaving official privileges unchecked. A new campaign to rein in the so-called “three public” expenditures – eating and drinking on the government’s tab, using publicly-owned vehicles for private purposes, and using public funds to go on sightseeing trips – is currently underway. But if Beijing fears instability as much as it appears to, it needs to tackle the problem with a greater sense of urgency. When the powerful and privileged feel they can do as they wish, they will soon find it difficult to use rules to constrain the behavior of other members of society. The ubiquitous official privileges are threatening to turn China into a ruleless country.

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